About PI

Dr. Ping Yu received his B.Sc. degree in 1984 and M.Sc. degree in 1987 (with Prof. Guangyin Zhang) in Physics from Nankai University. His master thesis studied ferroelectric commensurate-incommensurate phase transition and impurity states in the ferroelectric crystals. During his master degree studies, he grown the crystals and used various spectroscopic techniques to characterize the crystals. After the graduation from Nankai, he joined in Tianjin University as Assistant Lecturer/Lecturer, teaching courses and working on nonlinear optics and FTIR spectroscopy.

He went to Hong Kong in 1993 and got Ph.D. degree (with Prof. George K. L. Wong) in Physics from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 1998. During his PhD studies, he had been working on ultrafast laser techniques (ns, ps, and fs) using wavelength tunable OPO and OPA, and was involved in research on second harmonic generation (SHG) and third harmonic generation (THG) and four-wave mixing of polymers and inorganic nanostructures. In his dissertation entitled “room temperature ultra-violet stimulated emission and lasing of ZnO”, he had investigated various stimulated emission mechanisms (excitonic and electron-hole plasma) and lasing of ZnO epitaxial films. The result was the first demonstration of room temperature stimulated emission and lasing of ZnO epitaxial film (reported in ICPS 1996 in Berlin), and inspired many groups around the world to do further research.

After two years in Technical University of Denmark (with Prof. Jørn M. Hvam) working on polarization states of vertically coupled III-V semiconductor quantum dots and Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen (with Prof. Jan W. Thompson) on a laser system for magneto-optical trapping of Mg atoms in Denmark, he went to Purdue University as a postdoctoral associate, where he studied biomedical optical imaging and optoelectronics in Prof. David D. Nolte's group. In Purdue University, he had been working on photorefractive quantum wells for biomedical imaging applications and laser based ultrasound detection.

He joined the faculty of Department of Physics and Astronomy at University of Missouri in 2003. He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2009 and Professor in 2014.